Theme Park + Cristobal and the Sea | Tue 6 Dec | Hare & Hounds | £7
Theme Park are a breezy wave of tropical pop, all subdued house grooves and cooed melodies from the Foals playbook. While they’ve fallen quiet since their 2013 debut, new single ‘You Are Real’ is a step in a good direction: washy, new-wave synths and an endearing awkwardness that stops things from getting too Topman-lite. Here’s hoping the rest of their new material is just as smart. See our full preview here.
Against Me! | Tue 6 Dec | O2 Academy | £18.15
Florida’s finest folk-punks have come a long way since the swaggering singalongs of their youth: from die-hard indie-dom to sweeping, anthemic pop-rock, and now finding themselves figureheads for the transgender cause within the punk scene. Against Me! take it all in stride, and this year’s Shape Shift With Me is another deepening of their sound, while the punches land as hard as ever. seetickets.co.uk
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats | Thu 8 Dec | Rainbow Warehouse | £14.85
Somewhere along the desert road between Black Sabbath and early QOTSA, Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats drag their bludgeoned instruments into a circle and beat out a psychedelic, knuckle-dragging trance. Lo-fi, slow as a wooly mammoth, and hewn from Stonehenge rocks, Uncle Acid’s kids bring the melody back to metal. There’s no pastiche here; just men born in the wrong era. See our full preview here.
Sold out: Pixies | Thu 8 Dec | O2 Academy | £36.56
While their post-reunion releases have divided audiences, there’s little doubt that Pixies can still crack out a barnacle-tight rendition of ‘Mr. Grieves’, or nail the windtunnel rush of ‘Alec Eiffel’ without breaking a sweat. Unsurprisingly, the surfer-punk weirdos who single-handedly reclaimed ‘rock’ for the art-house outsiders are enjoying a largely sold-out UK tour – even without the eternally-cool Kim Deal. See our full preview here.
Beartooth | Sun 11 Dec | O2 Institute | £18.10
There’s few more direct statements of intent than naming your album Aggressive. Ohio metalcore merchants Beartooth go for the throat with the kind of clean-cut, jagged riffs that made Every Time I Die and Architects into household names (assuming the household had an angry teenager in it). They may lack some of the artistry of their better known peers, but they hit the right notes for a headbanging neck workout. seetickets.co.uk
Words: Chris Donald - Gigs Editor
Published on: Sun 6 Nov 2016